d against
surrender; and Le Loutre, who thought that he had everything to fear at
the hands of the victors, exclaimed that it was better to be buried
under the ruins of the fort than to give it up; but all was in vain, and
the valiant Vannes was sent out to propose terms of capitulation. They
were rejected, and others offered, to the following effect: the garrison
to march out with the honors of war and to be sent to Louisbourg at the
charge of the King of England, but not to bear arms in America for the
space of six months. The Acadians to be pardoned the part they had just
borne in the defence, "seeing that they had been compelled to take arms
on pain of death." Confusion reigned all day at Beausejour. The Acadians
went home loaded with plunder. The French officers were so busy in
drinking and pillaging that they could hardly be got away to sign the
capitulation. At the appointed hour, seven in the evening, Scott marched
in with a body of provincials, raised the British flag on the ramparts,
and saluted it by a general discharge of the French cannon, while Vergor
as a last act of hospitality gave a supper to the officers.[259]

[Footnote 258: _Journal of Pichon_, cited by Beamish Murdoch.]

[Footnote 259: On the capture of Beausejour, _Memoires sur le Canada,
1749-1760_; Pichon, _Cape Breton_, 318; _Journal of Pichon_, cited by
Murdoch; and the English accounts already mentioned.]

Le Loutre was not to be found; he had escaped in disguise with his box
of papers, and fled to Baye Verte to join his brother missionary,
Manach. Thence he made his way to Quebec, where the Bishop received him
with reproaches. He soon embarked for France; but the English captured
him on the way, and kept him eight years in Elizabeth Castle, on the
Island of Jersey. Here on one occasion a soldier on guard made a dash at
the father, tried to stab him with his bayonet, and was prevented with
great difficulty. He declared that, when he was with his regiment in
Acadia, he had fallen into the hands of Le Loutre, and narrowly escaped
being scalped alive, the missionary having doomed him to this fate, and
with his own hand drawn a knife round his head as a beginning of the
operation. The man swore so fiercely that he would have his revenge,
that the officer in command transferred him to another post.[260]

[Footnote 260: Knox, _Campaigns in North America_, I. 114, _note_. Knox,
who was stationed in Nova Scotia, says that Le Loutre left behind him